


watch the sun

by ishka, Sierra



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Multi, Psychological Trauma, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:36:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8438725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/pseuds/ishka, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sierra/pseuds/Sierra
Summary: A clean human mouth is host to approximately forty-two different species of bacteria. That, as Haruka understands it, is why even a clean bite is no cleaner than cutting your hand on a piece of glass at the bottom of a sewer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> sierra and i wanted to write a zombie au so we did. 
> 
> 1st part is mine, 2nd part is hers.
> 
> **heed the tags and warnings.**
> 
> happy halloween ;>

Dawn breaks and Sousuke is finished.

Blue fog lulls in waves just above the long grass all the way into the treeline. It inches towards him and spills over the edge of the disrupted soil. It swirls within the space he’s created. It continues on towards the town.

The air is chilly and clammy beneath the topsoil and his sweat begins to cool from his skin, leaving him with an uncontrolled shiver on his limbs and a deep shake at his core that puts an audible clatter between his teeth.

He stands at the bottom of the grave and considers taking it for himself. Lowering down to lie flat and staying there and hoping the revolving summer rains fill it in enough to drown him, silence him. Take away his ability to scream and take away his ability to hear anyone else scream. A murky, muted tomb where it is silent, blessedly silent. It would only be him and all of this agony, as it should be.

He’s too tired to hoist himself out on a jump. If he sits down he won’t get back up.

So he heaves the shovel out ahead of himself and crawls out. He slips down the muddy wall once. Twice. Pebbles carve lanes into his forearms and where his shirt rides up. He stumbles, so dangerously close to losing his balance and getting what he wants. One thing Sousuke’s never been given though, is what he wants. He lands on his feet and he crawls upwards again.

One elbow over the edge, followed by the other, followed by a leg. He’s three limbs and a head out of the grave, and that’s enough of him. Earth crumbles at the edge where he’s lingered his weight and threatens to drop him. That’s what he wants, that’s what he can’t have.

He shoves what he has left of himself into pulling out of the hole inch by inch, and rolls onto his back at the surface over all of this damp, misplaced dirt to stare up at the pitch purple sky and watch the stars go out one by one.

Sousuke eventually turns his head to catch the last of the stubborn stars going out to the west, and feels nothing within himself to see they’re already gone.

Makoto stares at him. Or through him.

His gaze drops to the dark-stained bundle wrapped protectively in Makoto’s arms, pulled against him where he’s on the ground and hasn’t moved since Makoto fell there with it. They’ve been there all night while Sousuke moved the earth. He couldn’t move it all, though, as Makoto hasn’t budged. All that betrays him is his hand weaving repetitively through limp and dirty strands of hair on a head tucked beneath his chin.

“I’m done.”

Neither of them have considered they have nothing to gently lower Rin into the ground with, and Sousuke climbs back down into the grave to catch him.

Haruka is as they left him. Begged for him. Plead for his help. He did not move; his hand is still outstretched and caked in dried blood beyond where his face is buried behind his knees, where Sousuke tried to pull him up anyway and drag him behind them if he had to.

Makoto screamed at him to stop. There is always screaming.

Sousuke collapses away from the blood-smeared brick to rest and leaves them to stay awake and rot.

* * *

 

A clean human mouth is host to approximately forty-two different species of bacteria. That, as Haruka understands it, is why even a clean bite is no cleaner than cutting your hand on a piece of glass at the bottom of a sewer.

“And that’s when it’s clean.”

“Where the fuck did you even learn that,” Sousuke levels flatly.

“Few years ago. Late night TV,” Haruka answers. “I just remembered it.”

Sousuke hums and offers no addition. He’s just not a lot of fun sometimes.

“So how many different types do you think are in a biter’s?”

Sousuke sighs and unceremoniously drops a fistful of wildflowers over an even less impressive shift of dirt nearly grown over entirely with yellowed grass. “I don’t fucking know, Haruka, maybe we can talk about it when we’re not standing over the graves of our friends and paying respects?”

“They don’t care,” Haruka muses. “They’d want to know. Makoto would.”

He squats and brushes the large lopsided stone of debris with his hands, making it an unmarked headstone again. Every time they come back here it’s harder and harder to find the graves. And those are the graves with bodies in them. Kisumi’s grave is just a former pile of rocks out here somewhere, scattered by elements and wildlife. Kisumi himself is a pile of bones by now in the heart of Tottori, miles away and picked clean.

They don’t look for the graves as enthusiastically as they used to. Maybe next time their friends will stay hidden and they can stop pretending like this does anything for their day other than ruins it. Neither he nor Sousuke wants to hear the truth of it out loud, but they’re gone. Makoto, Rin, Kisumi. In fact it’s Sousuke who watched every one of them die, so Haruka wonders why he stands steadfastly and speaks to them in his head as if they’ll listen, with a gaze drowning in grief and guilt as if they’d notice.

It would be easier to let them go. Sousuke doesn’t know easy.

None of them care if their graves are visited, they can’t care anymore. The only ones suffering from these memories are Haruka and Sousuke and they live enough horror as it is without needing to recall and relive all the individual times their lives fell apart on the long walk to the outskirts of town. It was horrific enough when they lost everyone, when they lost Rin, when they lost Makoto, and when they threw the last shovel-full of dirt over Makoto’s grave and stood up straight to only see each other. Only them.

They lost Rin to a bite on a botched supply forage about three years ago. They were still clumsy, they still didn’t fight as well as they can now. They let themselves be cornered, and it cost them a bite to Rin’s calf. It got him in the end, and that’s all there is to tell by now as far as Haruka and Sousuke figure. The details aren’t worth how sick it makes them.

They found and lost Kisumi in a preciously short window of time after Rin. A few weeks, maybe. Haruka was deathly ill with a flu nearly his entire stay with them and doesn’t remember a ton of it. Sousuke took Kisumi into Tottori for medicine; after Rin passed, Makoto wasn’t as reliable for what needed to be done anymore and Kisumi insisted Sousuke couldn’t do the run alone. But only Sousuke came back, and by consequence Haruka lived to see another day.

They lost Makoto to an infection at the end of winter before last (most likely), which was a sore fucking hit considering how long he’d avoided the real threat. He almost made it to spring and maybe it would’ve cleared up if he had. But food was hard to get that year and they were wasting away. None of the expired antibiotics they had did anything, they didn’t even know exactly what it was, and Makoto was exhausted in every sense of the word by that point.

One day when Sousuke was out looking for water and Haruka stayed to help manage Makoto’s fever to anything below boiling, he told Haruka

_I want to see Rin now_

in his only moment of lucidity in days, and he waited just long enough for Sousuke to return to make good on his intentions.

Makoto was stubborn about things like that.

“Maybe like, two-hundred.”

Haruka looks up at him with a low brow. “You just pulled that out of your ass.”

“Duh. Y’think?”

Haruka rolls his eyes and steps to the next grave to fix its headstone, then thinks better of it. Little white flowers pepper the dirt here and the grass choking the stone is sort of contempo-rustic suburban patio décor, just like Rin would’ve liked. People would’ve paid good money for a fake rock overrun with colorful weeds like this to set up in their adobe clay flower pots. “He’s still such a fucking show-off. Why does he get all these flowers? He’s right next to Makoto and won’t share.”

“He’s been there longer,” Sousuke answers, though he didn’t need to. “Soil’s more settled or some shit.”

“Jesus,” he mutters as he stands and brushes his palms back and forth to shake the dirt from them. “You’re really bad at educated guesses.”

Sousuke just shrugs and silently bows his head and closes his eyes over both graves. Haruka doesn’t do that anymore. He’s here for Sousuke.

“Are you letting him know you miss his dick?”

“Haruka,” Sousuke warns on a mutter without opening his eyes.

“He’d be offended if you didn’t.”

Sousuke rolls his neck and turns to him to tell him that’s not fucking funny, but the smirk pulling at his mouth betrays him. “It was a comfort thing. Not a lust thing. Cut it out.”

He laughs a beat. “I sure miss being comfortable, then.”

“Me-e too,” Sousuke agrees quickly drawn out over an exhale. “Not as much as I don’t want your grimy ass anywhere near me, though. Can rarely get it up anymore anyway. Malnourishment is a bit of a bitch.”

“Sounds like a challenge for me then,” Haruka says, and takes the opportunity to simultaneously leer at him and take stock of how he’s holding up. Sousuke’s just as dirty as he is. Visibly stubbled, but he knows Haruka likes that and didn’t shave last time on purpose, and it also hides a scar he doesn’t care for on the underside of his chin. Haruka’s certain that his shirt isn’t that old and it’s already permanently stained with grime and sweat.

It’s summer, so they’re not as tragically thin as they were a few months ago. Sousuke’s just whining at this point. If they were clean, Haruka would drop and blow him right here just to prove he could get it up. The thought is invasive considering their location but it has been a minute and a half of involuntary abstinence. Catching wind of the right mood in this feral and disconnected environment is about as easy as stapling a puddle of water to a wall.

In any case they really could use a bath. It’s probably been a few days, but it’s difficult to count. Especially since Haruka doesn’t bother to anymore. The year after Makoto died was such a blur or mindlessly numb survival it could easily have been two. The calendars in the racks of blown out boutiques around here all ended ages ago on some distantly forgotten December 31st. He knows it’s summer by the sunset and the flowers, and that it’s about the fifth one since the outbreak. Maybe the sixth, even. He honestly doesn’t care. It might even be his birthday, now that he thinks about it. Twenty-… hmm. Thirty is a possibility too. Somewhere up there.

“We should check the fishing lines and go for a dip while we’re there.”

Sousuke doesn’t agree or turn it down for a long pause, having returned his focus to the graves to wrap up his thoughts. Haruka notices Sousuke turns his haunted gaze out to the field beyond, and sweeps his eyes side to side in endless search. His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows down something thick not meant for Haruka to hear, then he steps away and nods the whole thing off. “It might be nice. We’re having a good day for once.”

“Don’t say it out loud, you ass.”

They linger at the gravesite, because they never know when the last time will be. It’s something that unnerves Haruka in a time where little can. It’s just him and it’s just Sousuke now. Haruka never wants to come here alone, and he goes cold when he thinks of Sousuke having to. At this point it hurts to come here more than it would hurt to leave it behind.

“Do you think they’d hate us if we stopped coming here?”

Haruka barely catches the gasp in time on his lips to hear it from Sousuke, of all people. In all this time neither of them have had the guts to say it. Beside him, Sousuke’s face is stressed and stormy. It’s nothing new, they’re always thinking about the same things, but then again there’s not always a lot else to think about other than death.

“Maybe.”

Then they leave for the sea without committing to returning to the bones of their friends either way.

* * *

 

Sousuke has never seen Makoto at peace.

“He’s getting worse.”

Haruka says it in such a way which begs Sousuke to disagree, to see something he doesn’t. He wants Sousuke to convince Haruka Makoto’s pallor is a play of light, the cold sweat isn’t as bad as it was yesterday, his belligerent murmuring forms words and aren’t just the whimpers of fever dreams. He wants Sousuke to tell him Makoto isn’t going to die.

Sousuke brings a futile hand to Makoto’s forehead and nearly gasps by how hot it is before they even make contact. The gesture stills Makoto’s fitful features, his brow unfurls and his jaw slackens as the tension drains. Which might all be progress if he weren’t also shivering ceaselessly with blue dusted lips a shade so unnatural it unnerves Sousuke to his core.

What’s worse than Makoto’s condition is the way Haruka looks at him.

His eyes are wide and glassy, wild and terrified. Sousuke didn’t believe anything could scare Haruka anymore, but then again anything happening to Makoto has always been just outside their realm of comprehension. Him sure, death seems to follow him more closely than anyone else. Haruka has seen his own death too, sick a few months back so badly- he came so _close-_ Sousuke can’t see him as anything other than delicately mortal.

But Makoto. Not Makoto. It’s all over Haruka’s face: anyone but Makoto. Too bad Sousuke’s the only anyone left, and he’d take Makoto’s place if he could. If Makoto was in any shape to take care of Haruka without Sousuke, which he hasn’t been. Even when he wasn’t dying.

Not yet.

“Do we have water?”

Haruka shakes his head a remorseful _no_. “I needed it, I’m sorry.”

Sousuke’s sure Haruka has barely had any in days going by his hoarse voice and cracked lips, giving all what he could to Makoto. There’s no snow on the ground, everything’s dried up. He needs to wander into town for more, and preciously soon. “Don’t be. I’m going on a run. It’s your turn to stay with him.”

Haruka squeezes his eyes shut and swallows down his argument of _no, you can’t_ because yes, he needs to. “You have to be fast.”

“I know.”

“He needs more.”

Much more than they can give him. He needs IV fluids, he needs a potent antibiotic, he needs supplements. He needs a warmer bed, a warmer home, warmer food. He needs Rin. He needs a miracle. Sousuke’s yet to see one of those.

“I know.”

Sousuke stands on sore, rickety knees to leave before it gets too dark and cold. Everything down to his fingernails hurts. No one ever told him hunger would be such a relentless agony, no one ever told him there would come a time he’d grow used to it. He will need to run, he will need to fight. This world doesn’t have sick days, there is no putting things off until tomorrow anymore.

If he looks at Makoto as he leaves, he’ll shatter.

Not yet.

He returns with more foreign blood soaked into his clothes than he could find in water. Two sealed bottles. Six biters to get to it; he’ll tell Haruka only two. It’s been pitch black out for well over an hour, he’s been able to see his breath condense on cold air for over two, making him just under three hours later than he planned on being.

It won’t matter in the end if he returned five minutes later or five days. Eventually, Haruka will say they were too late the second the infection took root. However, Sousuke knows they were too late when Rin drowned on his last breath. Too much of Makoto was buried with him; what returned from Rin’s grave wasn’t alive or dead. This is the way it was always going to be.

He had his moments. There were seconds, precious seconds, when Makoto was Makoto. When determination and fight found its way back to his eyes, when his hands graced Sousuke’s body in thoughtful wonderment, when he’d work the aches out of Haruka’s joints and murmur stories and hide smiles against their skin.

Inevitably a scream somewhere would tear their world in half again, and drag Makoto back into the chasms left behind.

Sousuke walks in on what he’s already seen. A scene he’s already played out in his head one thousand times since he left earlier that evening. He moves familiarly and rehearsed, not a step out of place.

Not yet.

He’s anticipated Haruka all but curled onto the bed, as close as he can be and as close as Makoto’s never let them get in the past year. He’s already felt Haruka’s hand at his cheek, where he holds Makoto now, already heard Haruka’s babbling, broken prayer: please, please, please

Makoto stares at him. Or through him. Sousuke’s seen this look before. It doesn’t follow his movements as it didn’t then, not after he’s crossed the room or guided Haruka away to no resistance. Sousuke makes it so he never has to see that haunting green hollow again. He risks everything to kiss him unscripted, slow and purposeful, longer than he should. It isn’t fair how real it feels when it isn’t. Fever still flushes his skin and keeps his mouth warm, though there is no mistaking nothing thrums beneath. Nothingness has a distinct, deafening shriek and Sousuke has heard only nothing since seven steps after he walked through the door.

Sousuke dares death to take him too, not for the first or last time.

Not yet.

A movement he hadn’t predicted rushes a dark blur to his left. Haruka’s knife, impeccably clean and razor sharp, laid out in surrender in front of pleading eyes and a quivering jaw. A blade shined and cared for for days on and off; Haruka always knew it would end this way too, didn’t he?

Sousuke will grant Haruka mercy, he will give Makoto true rest. Like he did for Rin. Like he’d do for Haruka. Sousuke would do it for any of them one thousand lifetimes over, so they never turn.

Haruka’s knife doesn’t belong in his hand. Sousuke borrows Rin’s courage to move it. He fractures now, but it isn’t time.

Not yet.

Not yet, when he lifts and cradles Makoto’s head to his chest. Not yet, when he goes clean through the stem. Not yet, when warm, thick blood runs over his hands and hides within folds of black linens beneath.

And still Haruka looks to him, still Haruka begs: please, please, please

Now.

* * *

 

The apocalypse is boring. Rin said it once. It earned him three unique, genuine laughs all at once he would wear proudly like medals for the rest of his life.

When they’re not fighting for their lives, Rin was right. It’s boring. It’s walk here for supplies, walk there to sleep, boil water, store food. That’s it. Iwatobi is almost all theirs too. They inhabit maybe about a third of its main drag and stick mostly to the outskirts. It’s a lot of space for two people, even if most of the town is uninhabitable and razed to the ground. The four of them stayed and cleared what didn’t burn a lifetime ago.

There were only a few citizens that weren’t rolled into a convoy and driven off to compounds who stayed behind, but they’re all gone now too, thinned out one by one with each biter attack until those finally slowed down. They don’t have graves. It was too resource intensive to dig them. They have their homes as tombs to rest in, and Haruka does not go into them even if they could use the supplies.

They stayed so they could wait for the others to find them, since venturing out to do it themselves wasn’t an option. Too split up, too dangerous. They’d never make it. Even supply runs into Samezuka were fraught with peril and infested with the dead and once Rin was gone, it was too risky to go even there.

So while they were four, they built up a few walls out of all the debris where they felt the area was the most open and vulnerable and set up safe houses and piled up supplies as they waited. They waited and waited for the Tachibanas and the Matsuokas, the Ryuugazakis and the Hazukis, even the Shiginos and a ton of others they considered friends.

No one ever showed up but Kisumi, and his stay wasn’t long. When Sousuke returned alone and with medicine that night, a deep dark under his eyes that hasn’t gone away since, Haruka reconsidered just how worth it was to see any of their friends alive again if it just meant an outcome like that. The scars on Sousuke from that night run deeper than the horror Rin left on him. Neither Haruka nor Makoto ever asked what happened. Haruka decided he never wants to know.

Makoto went on to think no one else showed up after Kisumi because they were all safe somewhere else, but Makoto’s words and Makoto’s actions weren’t always in agreement. He also kept a corner of his main room dedicated in memoriam to everyone laid out with things that represented each person for him, and paid his respects over it as diligently as Sousuke does for the dead now.

Through the decay the sea still smells nice. They have a little alcove set up with fishing lines and it never catches shit, or if it does something bigger comes by and snatches it off the hook, but sometimes they get lucky. If they’d sit there and actively fish they’d have more success but if the apocalypse is boring, then fishing for hours during the apocalypse is surely mind numbing. Curiously, Makoto liked to do it. Now that he’s gone they just don’t bother. Hunting the encroaching woodlands is sufficient.

There’s nothing on the lines.

“I have soap though,” Sousuke reveals as a consolation, and squats to dig through his backpack in the sand. “... Somewhere.”

“Please find it,” Haruka groans. “You fucking stink.”

“Not as much as your goddamned attitude does, Nanase,” he clips, then makes a small grunt of _eureka_ and tosses an untouched, wrapped bar over. Springbrook. Cute. Haruka suspects Sousuke breaks into the tombs for some of the items he turns up with, Haruka is fine to turn a blind eye to it. The Matsudas down the road won’t miss their toiletries; skeletons have no need of skin care.

They strip their gear and clothes and shoes and Haruka wolf whistles after Sousuke sarcastically when he walks by, making Sousuke glare over his shoulder as he steps into the water. It’s nice that there’s muscle on him again. Haruka hates seeing so many of his ribs in the winter, hates that he hides his cheek bones behind a fuller beard and fakes being full to get Haruka to eat more. Hates that he allows himself to fall for it sometimes, because he’s just that hungry.

Sousuke disappears to dunk, and Haruka wades his way to him with their prized possession lathering between his hands. When Sousuke resurfaces, the sun catches on Rin’s pendant resting on his chest and gives Haruka pause. Haruka reaches out and holds it between his sudsy fingers just to feel it, and Sousuke stands still and lets him do it without comment.

When Haruka re-centers the pendant, he lingers his fingertips just beneath it, suddenly stricken with a patch of skin not sunburned, scabbed, scarred, or dirty. Perfect and healthy. Makoto pointed these sorts of things out, continuously looking for something, anything unbroken until the end. A cell phone with no cracks or dings, gossip magazines still in shrinkwrap, an unopened tube of paint. Makoto bookmarked spots on all of them still untouched, sometimes gently with his lips, sometimes bruising when life was too unfair and nothing deserved to go unmarred.

Rin’s hair was Makoto’s favorite unspoiled thing, always inexplicably soft.

Haruka blinks himself out of his thoughts when his fingertips stall their path on a change of texture, caught on Sousuke’s jaw just in front of his ear where his stubble is thick and coarse. Sousuke still hasn’t moved, but he doesn’t look like he’s there either. His eyes are unfocused past Haruka, nothing on his face other than his permanent dark secrets. He exhales hard as he breathes, to either sink his chest in away from the pendant for a guilty moment where Rin can’t crush him or to stubbornly hold down a cry. Probably both.

The empty feeling that blooms in Haruka’s stomach when he catches Sousuke this way is not unlike the feeling he’d be saddled with were he to lose Sousuke for good. It gnaws at him, it makes his knees weak. All of his nightmares are about being alone in this world. He chokes on panic if Sousuke doesn’t return from a run after too long, excusing his fervent need to touch him and hold him when he returns away with crass lines.

Truly, if he lost Sousuke, if it were just him... it’s the one fear they all shared, the one fate they knew was inevitable for one of them. Haruka can’t think too long about that one inevitable person being himself. They’ve stubbornly made it this far for each other, to keep that fate away for as long as possible.

Haruka is selfish; he refuses to be the one to bear a fate like that. Not until he figures out how to beat it so neither of them have to suffer it after suffering so much already.

He starts at Sousuke’s neck with soap to bring Sousuke back to him, an intimate gesture so foreign Sousuke flinches and steps back. But he’s here again, it’s what matters. Haruka can always bring him back.

“Let me,” Haruka murmurs, and Sousuke complies.

And for a moment everything’s all right.

Sousuke bows his head, hovered at first, finally falling to rest fully on Haruka’s shoulder. Haruka keeps his hands low and slides the soap around to reach Sousuke’s back. He’s tense under Haruka’s ministrations; even the soothing strokes Haruka pulls between his shoulder blades and down over his perpetually pinched lower back, that he genuinely means to be comforting, do nothing to calm him. His coiled up disposition is nothing new. Few things about Sousuke are okay anymore, and he carries all of it on his back.

“It hurts today,” Sousuke says. His breath is jagged, his tone is small. Haruka ceases the lathering at his back. He hooks his arms together at the center of Sousuke’s spine and tugs him closer, so he’ll hear Haruka’s admission better when he turns his head and presses his lips to Sousuke’s ear to speak:

“I know.”

Then the moment’s over.

Haruka shoves it to the back of his mind as far back as he can as he lets Sousuke go and continues to wash up, passing the soap back and forth as needed, resuming the jabs and the jokes between teasing kisses everywhere but on the lips. They need those to gasp and moan and curse. He puts his clean body back into his disgusting clothes that look no better even after three dips in saltwater and shoulders the punishingly heavy backpack he wears every. Single. Day.

It’s high afternoon once everything’s dry again and it’s swelteringly hot.

“So much for a clean ass. I’m not putting my face near your dick until it’s cooler out.”

“And here I thought Rin would stay the champion of Lines I Never Needed to Hear until the end of time. Makoto would put you in a headlock and wash your fucking mouth out with that soap if he heard how you talk now,” Sousuke scolds.

“Good. Then I could cull the bacteria count back down to forty-two types.”

Sousuke laughs openly at that from deep in his chest. It’s the first one Haruka’s heard in weeks.

Now they’ll go to one of the shacks where they keep dried meats and pick up dinner. He’d bitch about having to do this survival circuit every day, but too many starved winters have left him thankful there’s anything to eat at all. They always sleep away from the food, they keep non-edible supplies away too. They have no defense against a dedicated group of raiders or more than a handful of biters, forcing them to rotate where they stay the night. If someone wants to come by and take all their food, they at least don’t get to take their lives with it. This has never been up for debate, and no matter how exhausted or awful they feel, the rotation doesn’t falter.

They keep cans on lines and other noisemakers throughout the streets where biters tend to funnel in to let them know if there’s a situation to deal with nearby. Any raider wouldn’t be dumb enough to run into that rudimentary security system. And this way, any less-than-ideal passerby knows people live here, sure, but not how many.

So far it’s worked out for them.

They’ve stopped, picked up a meal, refilled their water bottles, and are on their way to the westernmost apartment building they have to close in for the day in one of the units they maintain when a clatter on the street over catches their attention. It never fails to seize Haruka’s heart in fear to hear a trap trip. Statistically speaking they should’ve been overtaken ages ago by something, dead or alive. Sheer dumb luck has kept them above water no matter how skilled they’ve become at survival.

Sousuke groans and stomps his foot in endless frustration. “Almost made it a day, why can’t these meatbags leave us alone for _one fucking day_.”

“It’s because you jinxed it,” Haruka mutters, and isn’t entirely joking.

Then the worst sound in the world happens: a second clatter. Then a third. A lot of clattering and clanging from multiple sound traps. Haruka’s not about to raise chaos and suggest their luck just ran out, but he wouldn’t gamble on a game of poker right now either.

“Let’s just keep going,” Haruka suggests. “Deal with it tomorrow. We’ve had a good day.”

Sousuke nods stiffly. They’re only two people. If they’re lucky, however many it is will scatter and get stuck somewhere by morning and be easier to clear rather than engaging them in the open as a herd.

“But we should check how many it is so we know how many to look for.”

He’s right. Haruka takes a long inhale through his nose and looks for the best way to spy on the street. There’s an alleyway that connects a block up between two dilapidated houses, and if he recalls correctly there’s a chainlink fence at the end of it to protect them as they take a peek. Without explaining it he begins walking swiftly in that direction and Sousuke follows him.

The clanging is a cascade carrying down the street and his heart sinks lower with every beat of it. This isn’t good. There’s no wind to trick them either. Something is hitting those cans and scraps, repeatedly. His lack of anything smartassed to say about it has Sousuke quiet and pensive at his side. They both know something’s wrong.

There’s at least fifteen. Fresh looking for biters. Usually after a summer or two they’re too decayed to move. These must be from an overrun community nearby judging by their mostly intact clothing and only superficially sunken faces free of lacerations. After all this time there are still so, so many.

“ _Shit_ ,” Sousuke whispers. “Where the fuck did they come from?”

They haven’t seen this many at once in recent memory, even outside of the town and on the main roads there’s never more than two or three wandering in sight at a time. The largest group they’ve had to deal with in Iwatobi between just the two of them was five. This isn’t a situation Sousuke can think through very well. It takes them back too far to a different place, strips them of the smarmy exterior they’ve built up. Haruka feels Sousuke’s tremble at his side where their hips meet.

“Let’s back track and stay in the ash house.”

It’s the only mostly-standing building on the burned down side, far away from this shit and hopefully still habitable. They haven’t stayed there in a long time, but they can’t stay here now.

The thought occurs to him that this is no wayward herd. They’re all stuck with single mortal wounds to their chests; whoever these people were were murdered intentionally and left to reanimate for the reason of making a herd of them. Sometimes people do it for fun. Sometimes there’s a reason.

“I think someone’s scouting this town on purpose,” he says as he thinks of it, and Sousuke pales. “They were lead here. This is too many to be a coincidence, there’s just not enough around to naturally bunch up like this. We’ve seen it before. We should stay quiet.”

Haruka startles when a trap trips from the road they just came down.

Then another. And another. And from the street past that until slowly they’re surrounded by the ominous echoes of rattling cans.

“Haruka,” Sousuke utters in disbelief. “What the fuck do we do?”

“Well I’d rather try to kill every one of these than end up gutted on a raider’s knife.”

“How the fuck do you suggest we do that?”

Haruka considers their options, not that there are many. They could wait right here and hope they’re not noticed until the herd’s dispersed enough to move through. Assuming the living don’t get impatient and run in to look for them. Or they can make their way nearer the beach and go all the way around the town to the ash house. Out of sight. Then wait it out there.

“If someone’s waiting for us, they want us to run towards the forest. They don’t know it’s only us. They think we’re a large group and will want to ambush us trying to escape. If we stay near the water as we move to the other side of town, we should be good.”

“Then what?” Sousuke presses. “We what? Lose everything to this? This is everything we have, Haruka. This is our home.”

It’s quickly growing burdensome being in charge of an increasingly stressful situation while metal clangs about and the heavy shuffle of dragging feet and creeping stench of death assault all of his senses. Haruka doesn’t know what to tell him. He doesn’t know how many there are- living or dead- if there are any living _at all-_ his theory could be wrong- and yeah, this is everything they have. All they’ve known as home for years but it’s been understood since day one that nothing is guaranteed anymore. They should always be ready to run and never look back; that’s why they always have three day’s worth of basic supplies on them.

“ _Haruka_ -”

“ _Stop_ ,” Haruka snaps. “Get it together. Nothing’s happened yet.”

The first one walks into view on the open end of the alleyway and Sousuke shoves Haruka to the wall to fall flat along it, side by side with his arm out and pressed heavy across Haruka’s chest to keep him there. And all they can do is hope it doesn’t see them. Doesn’t smell them. The biter can’t smell them, not here. Not when the other side of the alleyway is a fence with only more biters on the other side. It can’t smell them yet until they’re ready to run for all they’re worth because if it does… Well, it’s still walking. Maybe it will pass by.

And then it stops. And Haruka can taste the blood soaking its clothing as it wafts off it.

Some of the most unfortunate and dangerous things about the biters relates to how keen they are. They follow and prioritize scents, they move quickly while they’re still fresh. They don’t just reach out blindly; they can hold on, grab, pull. They communicate on some level with each other, naturally bunching together and rarely alone. Having learned all of this over the years from experience is enough to have convinced Haruka the rest of Japan is just as fucked as Iwatobi without needing to plan an expedition to find out. But still, while terrifying, he wishes that were all the biters were capable of.

Because their defining trait is more sinister and unexplainable than rudimentary hunting instincts: They scream.

Sousuke’s surpassed his mild tremble and shakes along Haruka’s unflinching form. He can clearly see along with Haruka just how new this one is. Days old, maybe. They haven’t seen a fresh biter in years and it’s just as fucking unsettling now as it was then. A few they can handle, but if they’re all like this... Haruka thinks to comfort him, but there’s no point to it.

The biter slowly turns to look down the alleyway, right at them, and it lingers its gaze. Haruka almost laughs, he really needs to bite his tongue because if they’d never stopped to bathe it wouldn’t have to scan them like this and smell for the clammy flesh beneath the layer of waxy springbrook.

Why they’re still staying rod still and pretending like it won’t scream anyway, like they shouldn’t be scrambling at it instead to kill it before it alerts the horde, isn’t a mystery. Haruka swallows a sob at the sight of it, when it steps into the light and shows its ashen face just right and floods him with memories. Sousuke’s breath stutters as if someone just took a baseball bat to his windpipe and crushed it. They knew this one.

Sousuke moves to take it down while Haruka still can’t, and he’s glad he moves so fast there isn’t more than a glimpse of Sousuke’s horror-stricken features. Sousuke keeps a hatchet as his weapon of choice, but not for its utility. When they lost Rin it was because a hatchet was all they had. It was that goddamned hatchet that fucked it all up, and Sousuke kept it. Sharpened it. Refuses to use anything else. Now he’ll put it through the forehead of a ghost from the past, and everything’s come full circle.

Because this one has long, unmistakably red hair over dark wine eyes.

Sousuke sprints at it as its shoulders bunch with coiled energy and its dead lips part, and he’s one entire second too late, as sometimes they can still forget these aren’t people anymore. His hatchet sinks into the biter’s skull as _just_ enough of a shriek escapes it, and that’s all it takes. The other shrieks ring out, a few on the other side of the fence turn around and hulk towards them only to catch on the chainlink.

They take one more full look at each other and run.

Screams ring out in the street from every direction as they take off full-pelt towards the Uradome coast. If they take the main road along the coast all the way back into the ashes of north Iwatobi, they’ll get where they need to be. If they can get there first and shake all these on the cluttered roads there. Biters can be fast but they’ll always trip.

There are so many. It’s all that goes through Haruka’s head for awhile. They’re all turned towards them, all shrieking, and Haruka’s never seen or heard anything like it. It’s so loud he’s wobbling, balance in his ears thrown by the vibrations.

Now that he and Sousuke run parallel with the shore and out in the open, he sees what’s going on. There was a compound not too far from them, protected and walled-in all these years and never open to refugees according to a woman who made it all the way to them years ago but stopped by there first. It’s far enough to not know much about it, close enough to know of it. Full of survivors. He can see the black smoke over the treeline even from here.

Makoto used to say that’s where everyone was when he was finished paying respects to the corner of his room. Safe and sound. Later Haruka will wail with Sousuke until he shakes, knowing now how right Makoto was all this time, but not until later. Sorrow is a luxury. Haruka has no interest in dying today.

A swath of biters turn onto the road in front of them and run at them. Six. There’s a ton on their ass so the only way out is through. Haruka keeps a long knife he lifted off of a soldier during the initial outbreak in a makeshift sheath on an even makeshift-er sling, and Sousuke has his guilt. They’ve always figured if they needed more than that to fight, they were fucked to begin with anyway.

When Haruka focuses on how goddamned ugly these things are, he can keep his adrenaline from betraying him and making him sloppy. The first one lunges for him, black hair gnarled and knotted so badly he can’t see its eyes. Its jaw works incessantly, looking for him and bubbling over with who fucking knows what. It grabs for him, he ducks, and runs his knife up and back out through the bottom of its jaw at a practiced angle and force before stepping out for the way for it to fall.

And onto the next.

He hears the telltale blunt crunch of Sousuke’s weapon, which is a lot better than hearing him scream for help. He can ignore him and not fret. He throws an elbow to get distance from the next biter so he can quickly dispose of the one on his left. This one’s beat all to shit anyway. Torched. Missing a lot of mass in general, so when it falls he’s not concerned for it getting back up.

Somewhere in the middle of putting his knife between the blue eyes of the third he thinks he could really use a swim.

The biters that were on their ass are now about up their ass after what couldn’t have been any longer than thirty seconds of fighting. Haruka bursts towards Sousuke and sticks the last one quickly in the temple to save Sousuke the energy of yanking his hatchet out of it and they continue without a word.

It’s a drive-by fight for every biter in their path. Stop, stick, bludgeon, sprint. And they’re gaining a sizeable lead over the main mass that’s slowly rolled together at their backs. Haruka would estimate about forty in all.

Haruka would also estimate he’s on the last of what he has for burst energy, and Sousuke’s in no better condition.

They run into three more and Haruka misses, slashing one along the face instead of through the skull like he’d aimed to. Sousuke swings and it isn’t deep enough; he yanks it out and tries again, throwing rot in a high arc that splatters Haruka along his arm and side of his head.

“Watch it!”

Sousuke shouts in annoyance on his second swing, Haruka doesn’t miss his second attack, and surely the third falls too since they’re running again though he’s not sure who took it down.

“Come on!” Sousuke shouts.

They can see it, the charred rubble that still isn’t washed away so many years later. They’re so focused on it, Haruka forgets the road starts to ride along another street overgrown with obscuring trees, and sure as shit shouldn’t be surprised but is when four more biters slam into them from the cover hard enough to throw them both down hard.

Haruka immediately twists and stabs out blindly with his knife, running it through an open maw that was falling for his face. He can’t yank his knife back out in time to take care of the other that’s all over him, and can only get his hands around its throat to push it back while he’s pinned under the other dead one.

“Sousuke!” he shouts. “Sousuke, I need help!”

_“Trying!”_

A glance to the side shows the main herd is back in sight again. Jaws snap above him and drag him back to attention. It’s heavy and strong, and this isn’t a great position for Haruka and above _all_ this thing stinks. He yells for Sousuke again as it bears down, sputtering that vile shit they all do from their mouths down Haruka’s throat and chest and he _really_ should’ve remembered to tie a bandana around his mouth for protection because-

It’s knocked away in the next moment with enough force to splatter Haruka with rotted blood again. Sousuke hoists the dead weight off Haruka, pulls him up urgently, and shoves his knife back to his hands.

The herd is only a few tens of meters away, and Haruka’s too dizzy from the fall to see one of the biters Sousuke thought he took down lunge at him before it already is, and all Sousuke can do is turn and tackle it back to the ground from this distance. They run, sort of. Not as fast as they need to be going. But then Sousuke abruptly stops, and Haruka turns to find out where and why the fuck.

Haruka can’t focus on how ugly they are now because he’s out of energy and needs the adrenaline to get through this, and a lot happens at once that moves more like a slideshow than an actual event that he’s part of. Sometimes the disassociation helps keep the raw, gut-twisting panic down that threatens to paralyze him when he sees things like the only person he has left in the _world_ turning and running back toward the throng.

The glint on Rin’s pendant is nowhere near Sousuke’s chest when Haruka catches it for the second time that day. The thin leather necklace that holds it is tangled up in the fingers of the biter that lunged and is now back on its feet to get after Sousuke again. The front of the herd is headed right for him, and Haruka vaguely registers that he’s screaming more obscenities at Sousuke in twenty seconds than Rin probably ever did in his life as he scrambles back to protect him so he can get that _stupid fucking pendant_ back from the _stupid fucking biter._

Haruka doesn’t count how many he takes out now. One slide at a time. A biter manages to knock Sousuke over and roll him in a scuffle- jaws clamped down on the denim covering his calf and thankfully Haruka doesn’t see it tear- but Haruka kicks it off hard enough that his boot comes back bloody. Sousuke springs to his feet just as the herd reaches him, placing decaying, bloody, oozing hands all along the back of Sousuke’s backpack. The screaming at this distance nearly makes Haruka throw up though he’s able to hack and slash at the hands to get Sousuke and his backpack free.

Too fucking bad if he doesn’t have the pendant back now. Haruka grabs Sousuke’s wrist and vows he will not let go, and with everything they have left, they sprint until the herd is out of sight once more. As they reach the ashes, there aren’t anymore biters in front of them that haven’t tripped into fallen structures, and still they don’t slow.

They run up a side street and from there take a convoluted mess of turns they know by heart. The ash house is actually the art museum, and has almost entirely been overtaken by the forest, but it’s still intact aside from a cave-in on one of the side rooms. Haruka slams into the door in what would’ve been a collapse if it wasn’t there to catch him, and Sousuke stumbles until his hands find it to hold him up.

But they still can’t waste time. Not until they’re inside and out of sight, out of scent. Haruka and Sousuke throw their weight into the door until it slides open, and it takes all their weight again on the other side to slide it closed. Their weapons clatter to the ground forgotten.

Haruka nearly doesn’t catch Sousuke when his knees buckle out, and silently walks him back and into a side office they cleared out for sleeping when they first found the place. Sousuke stands long enough to let Haruka help him with his backpack before reaching for him again. Haruka gets his bag to the floor one-handed.

Haruka eases Sousuke down to sit up against the wall, and doesn’t stand back upright from his bend in favor of following it through for a dive at the floor to Sousuke’s side. He rolls to his back and clutches a hand over his erratic heart to slow it and rub the ache away.

“You… fucking… _fuck… Sousuke,”_ Haruka wheezes. “Fucking. _Stupid._ _Fuck_.”

“I get it,” he answers, equally as winded. “Thanks.”

“Please tell me… you at least got it back.”

Haruka groans when Sousuke drops his right arm heavy on his cramping stomach, and sees the pendant hanging over the index finger of Sousuke’s fist smeared in blood.

Sousuke’s blood.

Haruka can’t speak, can’t breathe. His wheezing comes to a dead stop in his chest. He makes out the telltale circle of teeth on the back of Sousuke’s hand, skin torn and garish, glinting red with his congealing blood, mixing with traces of that damnable brown sludge that bubbles out of the biters’ mouths.

A weak laugh. “Yeah, I noticed that too. I take it you didn’t bite me for fun during any of that.”

“Sousuke,” Haruka whispers, voice crushed by the only genuinely bone-deep terror he’s felt all day.

“Thought so.”

Haruka sits up and carefully lifts Sousuke’s hand to stare at it more. There’s nothing to see or look for. It is exactly what it looks like, it is exactly Haruka’s worst nightmare.

“It’s gotta come off,” Sousuke continues quietly. “Soon.”

“You stupid fuck,” Haruka repeats, but it’s more of a choke through a swollen throat.

“You got that saw in the kit, right? We put it there for this. It’s been there since Rin.”

Sousuke’s trying to reassure him. Trying to tell him this was always a possibility, and that they should be grateful they have some sort of way to fix it. It doesn’t help at all. Haruka’s still staring at it.

“Listen, Haruka, we gotta do this fast.”

“I can’t do it,” he mutters. “Sousuke, I can’t do that.”

“You have to, or I’ll die. I don’t have enough time to do it on my own otherwise you _know_ I would so you didn’t have to.”

He should already have the tools laid out. He should already be making Sousuke lie flat and jamming a square of leather between his teeth to bite down on. They keep one in the kit after what happened with Rin, as fucked up as it is. He still isn’t moving though.

“Hey,” Sousuke laughs uneasily. “I don’t want to die. I want to be here for you. _Please_ , Haruka- I don’t want to leave you alone.”

Haruka snaps out of it and places Sousuke’s hand down. He drags his backpack to him and takes out their heavy first-aid kit, two parts. The clean stuff and the stuff they use to get clean. Sousuke’s repositioning already to get flat, and extends his arm palm-up along the floor with resignation rut deep in the lines of his features. There’s no other way. There’s no time. Haruka’s already refused to be the one left alone.

“I’ll walk you through it, all right? I’ll stay awake, I promise.”

Because Sousuke’s the one who had the guts to lose himself for a week in the old, partially untouched library and taught himself how to do all this on a stranger’s dead body after it didn’t work the first time. He knows it back and forth now, he vowed to never let what happened to Rin happen to Haruka or Makoto. Lot of good that did.

Haruka nods meekly as he finds the tourniquet and cinches it below Sousuke’s artery after feeling for it briefly, tight so it hurts otherwise it isn’t tight enough. Sousuke flinches and lets out a shaky breath through his nose and this is already too much. Sousuke accepts the leather square when Haruka slides it between his teeth. He next tears open a preciously rare foil packet with a sanitary wipe for Sousuke’s arm.

“Where?” he asks.

Sousuke sighs and speaks over the bite. “I’d like to chance it and keep my elbow. Just below?”

Haruka laughs, this is incredible. This is the worst thing he’s ever done and he hasn’t done it yet. He cleans the area best he can, and grabs a second wipe for his hands before touching anything in the proper kit.

“Scalpel first. Long one. Then saw. Then scalpel for the other side. Easy, right?”

The razor sharp scalpel weighs a ton in his hand.

“You’re gonna cut half-way around until you hit bone, okay? Bone’s the worst part and otherwise it’ll be fast. It’ll be fast.”

“Rin wasn’t…” Haruka mumbles.

“We were scared and didn’t know better back then. We did everything we could with what we had.”

“How many times did you have to tell yourself that before you believed it?”

Sousuke swallows roughly, immediately making Haruka regret his inquiry by the way his jaw trembles just enough to be noticed. “Who said I do?”

Haruka nods dismissively, not wanting to know any more. He doesn’t tell Sousuke he’s afraid now, too. But it was Rin’s leg, he reasons quickly. This will be different. It’s not the same, it’s smaller. There’s less to fuck up. Rin died of prolonged shock when the tools they had weren’t enough. Weren’t fast enough. Sharp enough. He suffered. If Haruka’s fast, that won’t happen to Sousuke. He leans forward and presses the blade to Sousuke’s skin; his blood beads on either side.

“If I bleed out or whatever, don’t let me turn, Haruka. Go through the back at the stem like I did with Makoto, okay? Surest way. I never want to hurt you so don’t you dare let me turn.”

“ _Stop_ it,” Haruka pleads. “Jesus, Sousuke.”

“Please, go fast.”

He opens his eyes only after he thinks he shouldn’t have screwed them shut to make the initial incision. Sousuke’s muffled groan into the bite brings him back. The blood is something _else_ and looks even worse as it spills onto the laminate floor and begins to pool. Haruka’s terrified that tourniquet isn’t tight enough but it’s too late now. Keeping this as clean as possible is the priority.

The second cut takes him out, mentally. Sousuke screams like the biters do and it’s fucking shitty and racks him with crippling guilt. Ringing replaces the stunted wails between his ears and he hones in on making sure he doesn’t cut more than where he is. The tissue and muscle part like hot butter around a knife this sharp and at some point, Haruka repositions to drop a knee onto Sousuke’s wrist hard enough to injure it to keep him from moving so damn much. He won’t be needing it soon anyway.

There’s one long deep cut, well as best as he could pull it off. It strays with knicks and filets along Sousuke’s skin in some places at sloppy angles, and the muscle is surely torn to tatters from all of the spasming and his jerking around but Haruka did his best. Blood soaks the floor and his arm is slippery, Haruka’s hands are slippery, the scalpel barely has grip and Haruka can’t see what he’s doing until stark white bone and tendon peek through the incision and forces him back to reality.

Sousuke’s strained with a bowed back on the floor, tension pulling his entire body taut and agonized whimpers falling out around his clenched teeth. Haruka thinks he’s about to lose him to unconsciousness; sheer shock dilates his pupils, a heavy sweat is broken out over his brow, and he’s deathly, alarmingly pale.

But he grinds down on the bite and snarls back to focus. _“The saw,”_ he gasps hoarsely. Keeps his promise.

Haruka twists for it where it lays in the kit and pauses once it’s in his hand to swallow down bile.

“Do _not stop_ ,” Sousuke begs. “All the way, don’t stop no matter what I do.”

If he thought the skin was bad, this is worse. He feels every tooth on the blade as it pulls and pushes along sensitive bones and belatedly thinks that leather bite was a useless thing to look for. It doesn’t do anything for his teeth if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut to grind them into it; Sousuke’s shrieks rattle the walls.

Haruka’s seen him in pain before, extreme pain even. But this isn’t a level of pain Sousuke could have ever prepared himself for. He can’t even find it in himself to tell him to shut up, even if they really could be heard and found by anything with this level of noise. Sousuke wouldn’t hear him anyway over his throat-tearing screams, and still Haruka shushes him anyway. He tries to comfort him and tells him it’ll be okay. He tells himself it’ll be okay too, and eventually Sousuke will forgive him for hurting him.

The sickest thing about it is not having anything to prop his arm up on and cutting it against the floor. Haruka needs to hold onto Sousuke’s forearm with one hand for stability in addition to the knee on his wrist while he inches through him bit by bit, like it’s a piece of wood, and he’d say Sousuke would be responsible from now on for any carpentry they have to do if Haruka weren’t currently taking away his ability to do it for the rest of his life.

The bones give way alongside Haru’s gasp at the drop in pushback beneath the tool. He throws it aside to clatter across the floor and grabs the scalpel again from its perch on the kit’s corner and cries out over his shot nerves and Sousuke’s haunting moans when it slips from his grasp and slides along the pooling blood. There’s not a lot he can do about that other than pick it back up and continue where he left off.

Sousuke’s losing his grip and tapering down to weakening whimpers, but Haruka doesn’t know what to do after this so he needs him awake a little longer. He needs to know Sousuke’s alive and alert for as long as possible.

“Sousuke, stay with me.”

He groans in response. That’s as reassuring as it’ll get. Haruka keeps going, pausing to remove the bite. If he’s slipping, Haruka doesn’t need a choking hazard in the way. The other side of his arm is inconsequentially thin compared to the hell they just went through with the rest of it, and Sousuke has nothing left to scream out of himself.

And while it wasn’t on his list of things to do today, it’s done nonetheless. He sits back and takes a heavy pause to stare down at the gap of floor that separates Sousuke’s upper arm from his lower arm, and drops the scalpel from his hand to let it splatter in the puddle that’s long since creeped towards him and stained his pant legs and boots, lukewarm and damp.

Sousuke puts his glossy, brimming eyes to the ceiling, and Haruka looks away to give him privacy. “Wash it out,” he croaks out with a slur. “Get whatever we got for gauze. Press. Bandages. Wrap it tight.”

He’s not much longer for consciousness. Even the pain seems far away on his face but he’ll forever bear the new lines it carved. How he’s even speaking is nothing short of the most stubborn need to keep his promise.

“All the gauze? What about redressing?”

“Worry later. Gotta clot and stay clean.”

Haruka nods to himself and retrieves a water bottle and the dressings with tired, trembling hands. It’s an _open gaping wound_. How the fuck will it _ever_ heal in this environment? How is he going to live and did Haruka even cut high enough up his arm to escape the spread of infection that claimed his hand? Even if Haruka did he could still die, still turn. This is a traumatic wound even with proper aftercare, and they don’t even have that.

No. He wouldn’t. Haruka wouldn’t let him turn.

He does as he’s told and elevates Sousuke’s arm towards the ceiling, uses half a water bottle to rinse the injury, and presses a thick layer of gauze to the open stump; his hands are staining the dressings with Sousuke’s spent blood at this point more than the wound is. Once old blood is washed away, no more flows. The tourniquet must be all right, and it’s a small victory. He’ll need to take it off in an hour or so and hope Sousuke’s clotted over enough by then.

He wraps it tight as he was asked, doubles and triples back and saves enough of that for another dressing in a pinch just in case Sousuke bleeds more. He’ll need to break into the tombs for more and he’ll break into every one.

At some point Sousuke tore his lip. Haruka thumbs the blood away gently and tips the water bottle to his mouth to force him to take at least a sip.

“We’re going to move now.” He says it to himself; Sousuke visibly slips away as Haruka recaps the water.

They need to get out of this room before Haruka blacks out too. He can only take the heavy stench of blood for so long, and there’s shit for airflow here.

After some careful maneuvering, a pitiful slip and crash over slick and cooled blood, and a few sobs of frustration, Haruka’s managed his weight under Sousuke’s good arm and uses the wall to get them both upright. He takes one impossible step at a time out into the hallway, and drags him all the way to the end as far as they can get to another cleared room. Makoto and Rin’s former room.

A few of Makoto’s items he kept here from years past litter the floor, dispersed by rats and covered in dust. He kicks a leg out to half-heartedly shake away anything resting in the folds of a curtain laid down as a shitty useless bed over a pillow of dead grass, and once satisfied they won’t have rodent bites to deal with on top of everything else, carefully lets Sousuke down onto it.

There’s a few spent games of tic-tac-toe on the wall in charcoal, some obscenities in Rin’s handwriting next to boards he lost, and whiskers and ears all around the characters clearly from Makoto. Haruka hears their laughter in his head, watches the entire thing play out on the floor in front of him cast by transparent ghosts and blinks away the tears that have been threatening to take him down since the alleyway. Sousuke won’t be happy to wake up to that wall.

He’ll wake up and recognize Makoto’s scattered keepsakes straightaway. He’ll see Rin’s grin in his cursing characters next to the games, he’ll feel Rin’s lips on his temple his jaw his mouth, hear all of Rin’s promises to Makoto they never kept whispered after a certain point where no one was really around to keep secrets from. He rests where they did. Entangled, sweaty, distracted from their reality on clouds of pleasure Haruka could only dream of. Where they’d talk until the early morning, to the point Sousuke yelled across the hall: _go the fuck to sleep_. They laughed then. Haruka would close his eyes and listen, pretend it was his laughter too. For how horrific it all was, Rin could always get Makoto to laugh.

He’ll relive it, all over again. He’ll miss Rin so much he gets sick, he’ll feel Makoto so close he’ll physically ache for days. There’s nothing Haruka can do about it but endure it with him. This is the safest room solely because it’s so untouched. Avoided.

He returns to the blood-soaked room for their things. He’ll deal with cleaning the tools he used later, and closes up the rest of it while leaving those on the floor. He’d like to say they can fucking stay there, as he never wants to do this again, but he knows better.

For the fourth time that day, Rin’s pendant catches his eye, still clenched tightly in the fist of Sousuke’s discarded and atrophying arm. For the _umpteenth_ time that day Haruka needs to fight the urge to throw up as he pries the already chilled fingers open to get it back.

Haruka’s never thought about just how familiar he is with Sousuke inside and out. Seeing this part of him discarded on a cold floor is nauseating. He only then recalls the plethora of times that same hand touched him; squeezed his shoulder, stroked his face, stretched him, shushed him, made him sob for more. Everything. He’s always losing pieces of Sousuke he can’t get back or beg for, pieces he would give anything of himself to gather together, but so much of him -both of them, really- is gone for good.

This is, in its simplest terms, utterly cruel.

A surge of hopeless fury wells up in his chest looking at the limb. He wants to break everything he owns. Punch out the windows. Run back out there and rip every biter’s jaw apart with his bare hands. They don’t deserve this. After everything. They don’t fucking deserve this. He settles on angrily throwing everything by the door and upending a trashcan in the corner of the room for the plastic bag, and grinds his teeth together as he lifts Sousuke arm to throw it in and leave by the entrance to the building for when he’s ready to leave and go on a supply run. He might need that arm to get away as a last ditch effort and throw it down as an easy free meal.

He hopes Sousuke finds that much as funny as he does.

Then he steps out into the hallway where it doesn’t smell like heated copper and Haruka simply breathes. Going out and getting himself killed in blind vengeance ensures Sousuke would die too. They’ll be here awhile now while Sousuke recovers, Haruka needs a level head. For Sousuke, for Rin, for Makoto, if not for himself.

Everything’s settled just as the sun dips low to cast everything to flames, their bags are packed back up and in the corner of the clean room, and Sousuke is _sleeping_ \- thank fuck- chest moving up and down, quiet pained groans and full-body shakes breaking the peace every so often.

Haruka rests exhausted on his side. He watches Sousuke from beneath heavy eyes for an eternity. He counts the beats between his breaths, and lets relief flip him inside out every time Sousuke inhales again. Sousuke’s lips part easily after some time, as if he hasn’t spent the better part of the day stretching them back in screams and distress, and Haruka’s too tired to stop himself with that observation from sitting up over him and gently laying his own over them. Brief yet firm, and with it he falls back to the floor out of strength and willpower.

“You taste like two-hundred types,” Sousuke murmurs many moments later so lowly that the dust particles flittering through the sunlight sound louder over it. He’s not awake, or if he woke up to say that unconsciousness swiftly reclaimed him, but Haruka isn’t hallucinating what he heard or the faint ghost of a self-satisfied smirk lingering over his slackening features.

“You ass,” he sighs, unfamiliar with the hope belying his tone. He’ll let it be just this once.

Rin’s pendant lays on the hardwood between them, along with Makoto’s charcoal.

He slips the necklace over his head, and asks them how they’re doing in a charred scrawl along the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> iska: [tumblr](http://iskabee.tumblr.com/)|[twitter](https://twitter.com/letsmosey)  
> sierra: [tumblr](http://sierrasuke.tumblr.com/)|[twitter](https://twitter.com/sierrasuke)


End file.
